DQXI Act 1: The Road to Yggdrasil

We have now completed the first "Act" of Dragon Quest XI. Dragon Quest games actually usually have some sort of "Act" structure, although a lot of the time, this is implicit (and odds are one of the Acts is much bigger or smaller than the other ones). Although the game doesn't explicitly label each Act separately, this is one of the most explicit divides in the series. The difference between Acts is night and day in this game, and you can always tell at a glance which Act you're in no matter what you're up to. Amongst other games, Dragon Quest IV has explicit Act numeration, while Dragon Quest V has the most meaningful Acts- that game is like this one in that you can always tell at a glance which Act you're in.

Act 1 of Dragon Quest XI is about establishing the world of the game, introducing the major locations, having some light-hearted fun (most of the time), and introducing the main characters. A lot of moments in this Act have reflected a moment of "huh, this is going to be important the second time around". When we look at Act 2, we're going to get to revisit each area of Erdrea and see how they react to new problems. We'll also get plenty of chances to see our party members come into their own, too.

One thing that really stands out about this opening Act is... well, there's a huge comparison to be made with DQ3 here. In that game, collecting the Orbs was something you did near the end of the game (well, the first part), and from there, you went straight to Baramos. The section after Baramos is actually rather short, which means that, if DQ11 wanted to make Yggdrasil a "final dungeon", they wouldn't have to add a lot of extra content after the fact to make the game come off as a finished product. Sure, yes, the way the game is set up now, there's clearly lots of places that are "tee hee, come back in Act 2!", but unless the player has been taking rigorous notes on those places, that ending wouldn't come out of nowhere. Especially since DQ usually finishes around levels 30-40, and that's roughly where we are too. We've even got fancy "lateish" spells like Multiheal!

As for how the Act in general runs... it's certainly a Dragon Quest game. This sort of town engagement is par for the course for the series- something rather obvious at first glance, but it wouldn't make DQXI stand out much if that's all it gave us. No, it's the revisits and the deeper dives into the world that make this game stand out amongst its brethren. There's some who'll call revisiting old areas "backtracking" in a tone of voice that means it prejoratively. I call it replay value. Even in a game where your final play time will be hefty, games can have some good solid replay value if they have good foreshadowing and are just fun to play on top of that.